Public Company News

ASX-listed WA manganese producer Element 25 has dispatched the first shipment of manganese concentrate from its new Butcherbird open-pit mining and beneficiation operation about 130km south of Newman in WA’s southern Pilbara region. The Perth-based company says Pilbara-based AK Evans Group last week kicked off ore haulage from Butcherbird to Utah Point in Port Hedland in readiness for loading and export.

King River has its sights on a free cash deluge from its proposed $204 million investment in a cutting-edge high-purity alumina manufacturing plant at Kwinana, south of Perth, after tabling a stunning set of numbers in its recently completed project pre-feasibility study. The plant is expected to deliver more than $190 million per annum in free cash flow over an initial 25-year operation.

Horizon Minerals has reported a host of encouraging intersections from a follow-up RC drilling program at three prospects within its Binduli gold project 12km west of Kalgoorlie. The pick of the drill hits came from the Honeyeater prospect, which returned 4m at 11.45 g/t gold from 113m including 1m at 32.4 g/t and 4m at 5.15 g/t from 93m including 1m at 13.54 g/t.

Hot Chili has dished up a bumper-grade 144m intercept at 1 per cent copper-equivalent as it looks to grow the resource at the Cortadera deposit within its broader Costa Fuego copper hub in northern Chile. The company is eyeing a pre-feasibility study to fast-track Costa Fuego to production with the high-grade core at Cortadera to play a key part.

Wiluna Mining Corporation has wrapped up its US$42 million term loan from commodity trader Mercuria and says stage one sulphide gold expansion to more than 120,000 ounces per annum and feasibility study work on its next phase of growth are now fully funded. The FS on lifting annual output at Wiluna in WA past 240,000 ounces is expected to be completed this year.

Canada-focused Ardiden is set to shift its exploration efforts into higher gear at its Pickle Lake gold project in Ontario. The company is eyeing a maiden drilling campaign at the Esker prospect near Barrick Gold Corp’s historical Golden Patricia gold mine which produced more than 600,000 ounces of gold. Previous drill intercepts at Esker include 12.03m at 3.2 grams per tonne gold.

AVZ Minerals has locked in a long-term lease over an industrial site earmarked as an integral logistics hub for the transfer of concentrate for export from its proposed Manono hard-rock lithium project in the DRC. The company says the Kabondo Dianda “intermodal staging station”, where the Manono concentrate will be trucked, forms part of its logistics plan to export finished products to global markets.

ASX-listed Estrella Resources has dished up a 22.85m intercept of nickel-copper sulphides above a previous hit that returned 20.1m going 1.04 per cent nickel at its T5 discovery north of Kalgoorlie in WA. Results from the current phase-three drilling campaign are due soon as the company continues to advance its geological understanding of the prospect ahead of the next stage of its exploration.

Queensland-focused Superior Resources has kicked off a significant new drilling program that will look to build on its gold resource base and follow up intriguing copper exploration signals at Greenvale in the state’s north. Managing Director, Peter Hwang says the planned 8,000 metres of drilling is shaping up as a defining step for the company and its bold blueprint for a greater Greenvale gold-copper production hub.

CZR Resources has managed to punch its way through almost half the planned 5,000m reverse circulation drilling program being undertaken at its 85 per cent-owned Buddadoo gold project in WA despite heavy rain. The company recently completed 24 holes for 2,298m on the first of several priority prospects straddling the Salt Creek shear in its project area on the Gullewa greenstone belt.

Todd River Resources has outlined a three-kilometre-long nickel-copper target at its Berkshire Valley project, 150 kilometres north-east of Perth in Western Australia. Recent shallow aircore drilling, designed to test for mineralisation below the soil and alluvium that blankets the region, has consistently returned highly anomalous base metal values kicking as high as 4,800 parts per million copper and 4,000 ppm nickel.

South Australia gold explorer, Barton Gold is set to list its shares on the Australian Securities Exchange in a fortnight after receiving conditional ASX admission approval. It follows hot on the heels of the company’s recently oversubscribed IPO that closed early and gave the company a $15 million war chest to unleash in SA’s Gawler Craton.